Politics

In responding to President Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism speech on Thursday, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir was joined on-air by Chris Hayes, another host at the network. In addition to speaking about the president’s proposals and plans, the two had a curious conversation about the horrific machete attack that unfolded in London on Wednesday.

Bashir and Hayes both maintained that the attackers are merely “murderers” and likely not al-Qaeda operatives and that they — and others like them — cannot be used to justify an ongoing War on Terror.

“Two lunatics out of nowhere with no connection to any terrorist nexus or any organization decide to hack a British soldier to death in the name of Allah, as they said,” Bashir noted, going on to connect this scenario back to national security and America’s ongoing war against extremism and asking, “Where does the war end?”

Using the Tsarnaev brothers’ — suspects in the Boston Marathon terror attack — as examples, Hayes noted that they were not connected to larger terror cells. He compared their lack of a link to a larger umbrella group to the suspects in the London attack.

“They may say that they’re some affiliate or something,” Hayes said of the machete murderers. “These are just murderers. These are murderers.”

Then, the two went on the lament the fact that anecdotal incidents perpetuated in the name of Islamic extremism, but absent of any larger-scale plot on behalf of an organization like al-Qaeda, are sometimes used to bolster efforts associated with the War on Terror.

“Those individuals are used by people to justify the fact that the War on Terror continues,” Bashir said.

Hayes, who maintained that these men are mere murderers throughout the exchange, said that their actions should not force the U.S. into perpetual war. In Britain, though, Prime Minister David Cameron and other officials have dubbed the deadly assault an act of terror.

“We may never be able to create a world in which there are no Tsarnaev brothers,” Bashir added.